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I sucked it up and started the Baldur's Gate series. Not sure how much combat changes in Baldur's Gate 2 to earn it the "best game of all time" I've heard thrown around a lot, but jesus christ combat in BG1 drives me INSANE, especially early on. From what I understand it gets easier later on as you've leveled and geared up more to take more hits. But until then, I'm turning the difficulty down.

Today that kind of gameplay is considered the stupidest of the stupid, but 15 years ago we didn't know any better and considered "luck" a perfectly acceptable central gameplay element. I'm crying on the inside and a little on the outside too, though, when I have to reload 6 times on the 3rd fight of the game because the enemy's sporadic ability to hit me happened to be less sporadic than usual. I was prepared for these kind of shenanigans when I decided to play an old game though, so I'm committed to see this one through!!!

theres something wrong with you.

i already played DXHR twice, going to trophy hunt on it soon. getting dead island for ps3 on release. also playing thief 2 for nostalgia and magic 2012 on ps3 to keep my skills sharp for the expansion this month.

however its a player based problem if you refuse to accept anything less than a flawless victory. sometimes the badguys get a good shot in and blow up Minsc. maybe you werent careful enough, or lucky enough, and now you have to drag SharTeels corpse around. deal with it.

i dealt with losing Khalid and Viconia on my first game. there is more than enough people around to fill in the gaps in your team. it might not be your dream team but if you can let go of your god complex and not reload the game constantly you might enjoy the experience, hardships included.

however its a player based problem if you refuse to accept anything less than a flawless victory. sometimes the badguys get a good shot in and blow up Minsc. maybe you werent careful enough, or lucky enough, and now you have to drag SharTeels corpse around. deal with it.

Or maybe the game forces you to have flawless victories because they throw way too much shit at you too soon.

Debuff spell on a powerful enemy was resisted? You only had one charge. Reload. Dicked around too much with Misc before doing his quest? You just lost the best warrior in the game. Reload/Start over. Started as a thief? Haha, what are you fucking stupid? Start over.

On another note, I'm playing Witcher 1, which is an okay game. The voice acting is flaky like the actors were given absolutely no direction or context and the combat is a bit like a one button QTE, but it has it's moments, like the very Lovecraftian swamp that continues to creep me out and the nice moral ambiguity of quest decisions. So far, I play Geralt like he thinks man is the real monster.

Debuff spell on a powerful enemy was resisted? You only had one charge. Reload. Dicked around too much with Misc before doing his quest? You just lost the best warrior in the game. Reload/Start over. Started as a thief? Haha, what are you fucking stupid? Start over.

best warrior in the game? easily arguable point considering Khalid could have grand mastery skills that no one else could and Ajantis was quite beast with the right equipment.

btw whats this about not starting a thief? the only downside is theres an abundance of thieves in BG1 but that completely balances out in 2. i made a thief character to become an assassin for the entire saga to follow in Bhaals footsteps and didnt miss a beat. in fact the whole thing seemed too easy... idk how you could have trouble with that.

dexterward: As I've mentioned before, Mass Effect 1 is like Babylon 5, huge universe, heaps to take in, a feeling of being within a huge community of races and a part of something epic etc. Mass Effect 2 on the other hand is far more along the lines of Stargate, with a far more condensed feel, Earth now has a far larger focus, much less information to take in, action is now a larger focus of the game.

Anyways last night I finished off Deus Ex: HR. Wow, what an epic game. The guys who helped make this game should give themselves a good pat on the back for making a great game. I loved this game from start to finish. This game to me was better than the first (and that's saying something as the first games awesome) and I don't say that lightly. People are welcome to disagree with me, as I'm sure they will, but that's how it was for me.

The game as mentioned by others has the complete feel of a Deus Ex game, offers you a fuckload of game time (I was playing this game for over 2-3 weeks I think), more if your the type that likes to get everything done (like me). The only negative for me was as others have said, in that there's no real consequences for your actions and the game has a linear path on the overall whole. If the game branched based on your actions, then that would have been a major positive.

I have to say that when I loaded the game up and I saw "Square Enix" I thought "hmm is this going to have people in stupid hairdo's and clothes?", but I didn't see too much of that, other than with the bosses. Contrary to my expectations the game as I said felt like a Deus Ex game, VERY Cyberpunk, which is a rare thing these days. The hacking end of things had a very Shadowrun-like style to it (like in this picture http://extralives.files.wordpress.co...pg?w=655&h=466).

I could sense a Mass Effect influence here and there. Definitely with the menu music.

So all in all I loved it. If you like/loved either of the previous 2 Deus Ex games (especially the first one) then you owe it to yourself to play this game.

I'm playing Witcher 1, which is an okay game. The voice acting is flaky like the actors were given absolutely no direction or context...

They fix that somewhat with the Enhanced Edition patch. Which, from what I noticed on Steam, you're tragically not using. Grabbing that should've been the very first thing you did before first firing up the game. I mean the whole thing is basically The Witcher: Fixed.

I finished Bioshock 2 yesterday. While it doesn't do all that much for me as a shooter, I definitely think it did several things better than the first game. One standout improvement IMO is the morality system - while the version in the original Bioshock felt artificial, this one makes a lot more sense in that Eleanor basically bases her own actions on your example. Obviously there's still an artificially mathematical element to it, but it's still done smartly.

Next up: The Ballad of Gay Tony - and still playing campaigns and single missions in Arma 2.

Great review, Moyer. It inspires the vaguest amount of interest in my game-dead soul so that's high praise seeing as hearing generally about sequels to games I adored (Portal 2, for instance) inspired barely a shrug out of me. The gamer in me isn't dead but definitely on life support.

Hey, cool. I recently returned to Commandos series too. Played Behind enemy lines, gonna play the expansion soon too and then move on to the best one. And then maybe do the 3rd one as well, even though that's the only commandos game I didn't like much back in the day.

Hmm, but seriously now, how is Commandos 2 not better than Behind Enemy Lines in every single way except being on the same level with some voice acting and some of the awesome locations?

Hmm, but seriously now, how is Commandos 2 not better than Behind Enemy Lines in every single way except being on the same level with some voice acting and some of the awesome locations?

C2 was much more complicated than C1. A camera you can control, inventory management for every commando, controllable npcs that turned it into an rts at times, tons of new actions, confusing interface... Technically, it was "better", yes, but I liked Commandos when it was simple and focused.

Well that's a good point too. But I really missed things like throwing people off ledges or into the water sometimes (you could do that in commandos 2 right?) and stuff. I liked the improved logic on it. Only the inventory managing may have been a bit much and the 4 sides cameras could make the location look totally different but at least it made sense. I mostly stuck to default stuff anyway. Only thing I never really felt all pumped up about were the inside-buildsings action. It's more challenge, yes, but doesn't make for an epic location. But I loved the stuff even more than commandos first ones.

So I managed to finish Commandos. The last level was indeed more complicated than the ones before, but still, that restriction was retarded. Nontheless, the game managed to impress me, I definitely like it. I've only played this one back then, so the expansion pack and the sequels will be completely uncharted territories for me.
By the way, I noticed that there's a difficulty level option in Beyond The Call Of Duty. What does that do? Not that I'm willing to select anything other than Easy. Just curious.

Not gonna start it right away though, need some time to rest, so I'll start a second playthrough of Deus Ex Human Revolution, this time on the hardest difficulty. I totally like the game by the way - I could name things in it I don't like (like the obvious Boss Fights thingy), but all in all it's still the biggest positive surprise in gaming for me in years.

I haven't played Desperados, so I can't comment. I think I played a few minutes of it once and didn't like it, but that doesn't mean that much.

Commandos 2 had a worse interface than Commandos 1, I never did understand why they had to change it (though Commandos 3 just took out most of the keyboard shortcuts altogether, bah! - luckily a mod fixes that.)

My main problem with it was the stupid fight scenes though, the ones where you had to to set up NPCs and withstand waves of invading enemies. That stuff just wasn't what Commandos was about. Sure, you could win Commandos 1 with that sort of nonsense (just standing around a corner and shooting everyone when they came around it), but it wasn't how it was meant to be played, while in Commandos 2 it's mandatory to do that.

They fix that somewhat with the Enhanced Edition patch. Which, from what I noticed on Steam, you're tragically not using. Grabbing that should've been the very first thing you did before first firing up the game. I mean the whole thing is basically The Witcher: Fixed.

In this day and age people should not watch or play dubbed films or games. The voiceover ain't bad at all in the original Polish. It would kill me to have Geralt speak in English.

Except you don't always have a choice.

I wish more games would take the route of Assassin's Creed and allow you to choose Voice and Subtitle language separately. Being able to play the game in Italian was great and added a lot to the feel of the game.

What we've learned in the last 10 years is that every enemy having a low chance to hit you for your entire health bar, is pretty much entirely stupid. There is little room to praise it for any reason other than the "we walked barefoot uphill both ways through fields of broken glass and we liked it" mentality. Enemies that have a 100% chance to hit you for moderate damage is something that you can employ skill to prevent failure, with lucky critical hits being the "danger" that keeps you on your toes; in BG's methodology, skill's primary role in combat is skillfully choosing not to participate.

I was so annoyed with the amount of times I've had to reload that I ended up searching the internets for more advanced tips. I see the word "just reload" in almost everything I read, but the one that really got me was where I read that the majority of the advanced players send scouting classes ahead of the rest of their party to make sure it's safe. I love playing games, but that's the point where gameplay gets so tedious that it feels more like work than play.

So I put BG down for a little while and finished LA Noire. Eh. I don't really see the big deal. The animation and facial expression technology was mind blowing. But the story didn't captivate me, and the gameplay felt very repetitive.

The fatal flaw for me: I was downright angry with the Truth/Doubt/Lie system towards the end - usually I can nail it, but sometimes you're expected to have a certain amount of telepathy. What the guy just said wasn't a lie, but sometimes Lie is the right answer because Cole is going to accuse him of something entirely unrelated. Sometimes what they just said is true (and they look straight ahead to indicate no foul play), but the correct answer is Doubt, because Cole is going to go in a different direction with the rest of the question. Made me FURIOUS WITH RAGE.

Then, there's a certain case where you have two suspects. If you "fail" an interrogation with one, you can't charge them with the crime. I don't understand how you can "fail" an interrogation. I have all this proof, but because I didn't pick the right answer to a couple of questions, I can't show it to him and ask an explanation? I know without a doubt that the other guy is guilty, but because he hurt my poor widdle feelings and talked back to me when I hit "Doubt" instead of Truth, I give up and have to charge the innocent guy instead? Is Cole Phelps the biggest fucking pussy interrogator on the god damn planet? KHSDKJFHSKJFHSKJGDLGKS. Oh man. So much rage.

Got started on The Ballad of Gay Tony. At this point, with a nice rig (i7 950 OC, Geforce 460 SLI) and the game fully patched, it's running very smoothly - no comparison to GTA IV when it'd just come out, even though my machine at the time wasn't bad at all. I also got the Episodes on PS3 and will try them on the big TV in the living room at some point - there's something about the cinematic style of these games that I imagine will feel quite different played like that vs. playing them in the bedroom on my PC. (Then again, I might just end up being ticked off at the bad framerate and resolution compared to PC...)